Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.

The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.

The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.

We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.